FYI - Amazon selling books on dog fighting

brutusesJuly 9, 2009

I didn't know if some of you were aware that Amazon.com sells dog fighting books and DVD and other training aids. I learned of this through major animal welfare organizations who have letter writing campaigns to Amazon asking them to stop the sale of these dog fighting aids.

Items listed on Amazon.com is not necessarily being offered for sale by "Amazon". Amazon has 10,000s of merchants/sellers who have permission to list there wares. I would put my money on these items being from a secondary source and not Amazon itself.

Ok I just tried that search too, searched for 'dog fighting' and most of what came up did not actually seem to be "training aids" or things for people (if you want to call them people) who fight dogs... I am not sure where the humane organizations are finding all these things on Amazon because I can't find them?

For example I have seen Carl Semancic's book "The World of Fighting Dogs" and it is not a "training aid" for dog fighters. It is a history of dog fighting/breeds and mainly is about the breeds of dogs historically used for fighting. Yes it does talk about dog fighting but not as a "how to" guide or to promote it, but rather discussing the history of it.

The first result I got DOES seem to be an actual dog fighting book but it says it was published in 1888 and appears to be a very rare "historical" book (albeit distasteful history), and seems unlikely to be much of a "training aid" for fighting dogs over 100 years later? It does look pretty bad from the title and I would guess it is not a very nice thing to read but that does not necessarily mean that one should ban all of amazon.com just because of that.

The second result is a documentary called "Off the Chain" which I just looked up on Youtube-- it definitely does not seem to be promoting dog fighting at all, but rather showing how horrible it is. They interview police and animal control officers, humane activists, and pit bull rescues as well as people involved in dog fighting... It does have disturbing footage (from the little I saw in the clip) of dogs fighting but it does not appear to be promoting it at all.

I looked through the rest of the results on Amazon and mostly what I found was books on the history of fighting breeds. Now I can't say for sure that these are not actually training books for dog fighters since I haven't read any of them, but from the information given they seem to be rather histories of the types of dogs used in dog fighting similar to Semancic's book and not about how to do dog fights or anything like that.

Now if you want to ban Amazon over something, from what I can tell they do actually list a magazine for rooster fighting "enthusiasts" (bleh) and have "handbooks" listed on that subject.

I haven't really seen any current dog fighting books/mags on Amazon, but their sales of cockfighting materials was brought up on a pet forum I am a member of. I wrote an email to Amazon and was basically told they sell whatever there is a market for, and if I don't like it, too bad. Considering the comments (and comments to those who purchase the magazines), there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for this sort of thing.

susannj, if you read the first sentence of the link he speaks of "animal fighting" then it talks about the cockfighting. It's about all fighting. HSUS sent the newsletter out primarily speaking about dog fighting. You can look through their newsletter if you'd like.

Thanks for reminding me what my subject of the thread was. LOL, I'm forgetful, not senile yet, but thanks anyway.